Mount Lofty Summit and Windy Point: best Adelaide city views

The old lighthouse on the top of Mount Lofty, South Australia ... and the sun is shining.
First priority: pick a nice day for this visit, because it can be chilly and windy up here...

They do charge for car parking at Mount Lofty, but a $2 ticket will last the whole visit.

The Summit Restaurant offers indoor and outdoor dining...

...Adelaide's Central Business District, as seen from Mount Lofty Summit -- a long zoom shot.
Can't complain about the views, while you're having coffee and lunch! 

Looking north from Mount Lofty Summit. The city is over your left shoulder right now...

"You are here" ... a visual guide to knowing what you're looking at!

An even longer zoom shot of Adelaide's CBD and parklands...

...and a wider shot, on a different--white-sky--day with very different lighting conditions.

The Ash Wednesday 1983 Memorial Placque, "In honour of all firefighters who fought the fires in South Australia"
on that day, "and especially those who gave their lives..." Golly, what memories this brings back. Shivers.

Fitting, that this should be a Sri Chinmoy Peace Summit.

On a warm day, this is a great place to picnic with incomparable views, and -- 

Watch the skies for utterly weird clouds. Or is this an alien spaceship pretending to be a cloud?!

Many people come here for the walking trails. It's a great place to hike ... word of caution:
be sure you can handle very steep trails, wear good shoes, carry water, and be snake-conscious. 

The high-tech fire lookout tower and heritage listed lighthouse, top of Mount Lofty.

Picadilly Valley as seen from the north side of the restaurant. (The info board is perfectly readable, if you view
this image at full size), and --

A wide shot of Picadilly Valley, in fine weather and morning light...

A long zoom short, showing the market gardening which is Picadilly's mainspring.

The Summit restaurant on a bright spring morning ... lunch, anyone?

The reflection in that window glass tells you exactly where you are!

The Summit Restaurant can get very busy, but we were lucky on this day...

...and the food and coffee were excellent. 

Back to the van, and ... now, will the Millennium Possum start, or ...? Phew! She did. So -- off to Windy Point
now, and more city views. (The poster features an Australian magpie and a superb fairy wren.)

The lower car park at Windy Point Lookout, on Belair Road. As the crow flies, you're about
10 or 12 K's from Mount Lofty, and just a tad bit south of due west. It's rather further by road, of course. 

An Australian magpie, and a crow, keeping an eye on picnickers at Windy Point.

Australian magpie. Don't let them fool you: meat pie and chips are NOT their
natural food. Their favorite food is salted peanuts. Really.

Adelaide's western suburbs and he Gulf St. Vincent, son from Windy Point.

Westfield Shopping Town at Marion shows clearly in this zoom shot from Windy Point.

Glenelg's highrise apartment houses and hotels, in a zoom shot from Windy Point...

Adelaide,'s CBD, from Windy Point, on a clear day in early winter, 2016. Note the cranes.

Glenelg, in a zoom shot from Windy Point on a clear day. See this at full size, check out the old
Glenelg Town Hall, just left of middle of picture. Compare with this, which appears in another post,
Glenelg on Labour Day 2011. Now, that is very neat.

The images for this post were actually gathered over several visits to these locations, but you can easily do both in the same morning, with lunch at any of the numerous cafes between. The Summit Restaurant is right there on the highest point in the Mount Lofty Ranges, and the food and coffee are great. Or you could come down around the mountain to Aldgate and find anything from marvelous pizza to full-on fine dining, then head from there to Windy Point on Belair Road.

If you're photographing the city, you need to do this in the morning, because you're looking at the sea in most of these shots ... the sun sets on the Gulf St. Vincent. Since you want the sun over your shoulder to get good pictures, head out early.

If you just want to do one of the two lookouts, you could head for Mount Lofty Summit, get some great pictures and then head down to Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens, which we covered in another post right there. (If you're picnicking, the gardens also have more sheltered tables.)

There's a very good gift store adjacent to the cafe on Mount Lofty, and some extremely challenging walking trails. By contrast, Windy Point offers mainly only a gourmet restaurant -- that's extremely well reviewed. We hear good things about their cheesecake. One of these days...!

Heading out to these destinations -- be sure to pick your day. It can be cold and windy, not to mention deeply overcast. On a sparkling day with clear air, the views are spectacular. On a dull day, spritzing with rain ... well, there's definitely better places to be and, luckily, plenty of them not far away!

Next: High Country ... the view from Mount Alma. Or, "Welcome back to the shire, Samwise."

Marino to Hallett Cove ... cafe to cafe! Got your hiking shoes on?

The Marino Rocks Cafe marks the end of the section of the coastal trail heading back to Seacliff --
the other end of this segment begins at the Kingston caravan park.

The view from Marino, looking north towards Brighton

A boadwalk follows the clifftop -- a safe way to view the dramatic cliffs at Marino and Hallett Cove.

The rocks here are ancient -- some of the oldest in the world...

...and great for fishing!

Neat little platform areas are set up with benches to rest your weary legs...

You can walk from Seacliff to far beyond Hallett Cove, but it's a looong walk with a lot of climbing.

Stop along the way for a picnic, and you'll have company! Crows abound, and it seems pie-and-chips
must be their natural food. Uh, right.

Just so you know where you are...

In many places, steps lead up and down to the rocks or beach below. Got your climbing shoes on?!

The walks and climbs are rewarded by spectacular views -- ancient cliffs.

Ocean views and brilliant wildflowers. Before you start scrambling around --

Danger of falling on your head. No, really? I'm amazed.

Watch out for wildflowers, and honey bees hard at work in the sea air...

The trail goes on and on, far south of Hallett Cove, but here's where it comes out -- 

At Hallett Cove Conservation Park, which is our destination today.

You're right under the international flight path. Qantas and Cathay Pacific will be overhead --

-- and contrails cross, where flightpaths intersect. Separated by a lot of altitude, of course.

Hallett Cove Conservation Park is criss-crossed by boardwalks. 

Plentiful information boards tell the story ... see the shots below at full size, they're perfectly readable.

Stepways lead from the beach-level areas up to the clifftop for a closeup look...

Very ancient, constantly changing geology at Hallett Cove.

Hallett Cove Conservation Park offers a great workout for your legs, too!

Along the trail, watch out for lizards. Relax! They're totally harmless. And cute.

Opposite the ancient cliff formations is Hallett Cove itself, complete with fishing boats...

...and fishermen angling right off the rocks at low tide. Before you start rock hopping -- put your shoes on...

You don't want to step on a blue ringed octopus in bare feet. Shoes, right? Right.

Hallett Cove's beach is not the best in the world for walking on. It fact, it's rough on the ankles!

But the view from the beach back up to the cliffs is really superb...

A wide shot of the whole of Hallett Cove, from fishing boats to beach to suburb.

A tiny part of the suburb of Hallett Cove. What a place to live!

The Boat Shed cafe stands right at the entrance to the Hallett Cove Conservation Park. Coffee, anyone?

June 5th, 2016, and our detour to the beach takes us from Brighton and Seacliff then down to Marino and Hallett Cove -- all a little way north of where we live, but close enough to be at the further point in fifteen minutes or so, on the new expressway (which connects the southern suburbs with downtown, if you stay on it the whole way).

You can actually hike from Port Adelaide to Sellicks Beach ... which would be a marathon indeed. A lot of the way, you'd be on esplanades, like those at Brighton and Seacliff, and some of the time you're on coastal trails and boardwalks, such as those you see above. On a blue-sky day its a lovely place to walk, and if your legs are up to it, you can make it up and down to the beach in numerous places. These are great shores for rock fishing -- and you'll usually see fishing boats out, often scores of them, if something is "running."

Or you could be here for the geology. Hallett Cove has some of the most ancient rocks in the world, and you get closeup views from the boardwalks, even before you reach Hallett Cove Conservation Park itself, where information boards tell the story of the region's geological history. With the Boat Shed cafe right on the park's gateway, you could spend all day here ... give your legs a great workout, for sure!

The images in this post were actually gathered over several trips and several years. We've done the boardwalk, but on June 5th we were short of time (we were really on our way to the stores!), so we drove from Marino to Hallett Cove. We walked in from the Boat Shed, through the park and back back along the beach ... and Hallett Cove beach isn't the greatest beach in the world to walk. It's all loose rocks and soft sand, tough on your ankles. However, the views from the beach are spectacular -- and there's a very nice cafe at the end of it ... if you can make it up a very long, very steep ramp! We did.

See Brighton and Seacliff here.